- Brazil: Bolsonaro launches presidential bid despite challenges
Source: France 24 [French state media]
“Flavio Bolsonaro on Saturday formally launched his campaign for Brazil’s October presidential election, seeking to extend his family’s grip on the country’s far-right movement despite a series of scandals that have dented his once-strong challenge to incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. … Far-right firebrand Jair Bolsonaro anointed his eldest son, a senator, as his successor after being sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup following his loss to leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s 2022 election.” (07/25/26)
- UK: Burnham vows no early general election before 2029
Source: Metro [UK]
“Andy Burnham has ruled out calling an early general election and said he will ‘honour’ Keir Starmer’s manifesto. The new Prime Minister insisted he ‘faced the public’ in the Makerfield by-election and had a mandate for his sweeping changes to the country. Burnham was speaking after a busy first week in the top job, during which he pledged to roll out the biggest changes the UK has seen in four years. … Burnham’s vow means the country should not face a general election until 2029, five years after Keir Starmer swept to power in 2024. There had been speculation that the new PM would want to go to the polls after he wiped out Reform’s poll leader almost immediately after entering No 10.” (07/26/26)
https://metro.co.uk/2026/07/26/andy-burnham-vows-no-early-general-election-2029-29225911/
- Tunisians mark fifth year of emergency rule with calls for Saied to go
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Thousands of Tunisians have rallied in the capital to demand the resignation of President Kais Saied, denouncing worsening living conditions, democratic backsliding and mismanagement of the state. Crowds marched down Habib Bourguiba Avenue in central Tunis on Saturday as the country marked five years since Saied declared a national emergency, suspended parliament and later dissolved it in order to rule by decree. It’s the latest in a run of recent protests opposing crackdowns on dissent, a struggling economy and limits on press freedoms. Saied’s opponents accused him of abusing emergency measures to institute a reversal of Tunisia’s hard-won democratic transition process.” (07/26/26)
- New Jersey Highlights the Problems with, and the Evils of, Automatic Voter Registration
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“State ‘motor voter’ laws — especially those which, like New Jersey’s, automatically register people who interact with the license bureau to vote, only later allowing them to opt out — don’t just risk inaccuracies like those produced by this episode, they abandon a key element in any supposed democracy: Consent. When you beg the state of New Jersey for a driver’s license, government ID card, etc., the bureaucrat behind the counter doesn’t request your permission to add your name to yet another database and co-opt you as a ‘member of the electorate.’ It just happens without so much as a ‘by your leave.’ … If someone signed your name on a legal contract you didn’t agree to or a petition you didn’t agree with, you’d be angry — and you’d be right.” (07/26/26)
- Judges Can Void a Tariff. They Can’t Rebuild Our Reputation.
Source: The Daily Economy
by David Hebert“[I]n the span of a week, the White House effectively told Canada, our closest trading partner and ally, that America’s word means nothing and then told them that they are complicit in forced labor. … Then we set a penalty that just so happens to approximate the Section 122 tariffs that just expired. Foreign officials must now contend with an even clearer reality: not only is an agreement with the United States not worth the paper it’s printed on, but we will accuse you of horrendous practices if it means that an administration can re-impose tariffs.” (07/24/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/judges-can-void-a-tariff-they-cant-rebuild-our-reputation/
- “Revenge Mode” As “Strategy?”
Source: The Weekly Dish
by Andrew Sullivan“Regime change failed, of course. Worse: the mullahs’ regime hardened and gained confidence from successfully resisting the might of America’s war machine. The US watched helplessly as Iran instantly blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, and couldn’t prevent them from hitting the Gulf states, Israel, and Jordan with what seems like a robust supply of missiles. So we were almost instantly exposed, humiliated, checkmated. The MOU was a recognition of this, but it postponed all the hard stuff and was so vaguely drafted that it soon fell apart. The only clear result of the war is therefore Iran’s control of the strait and enhanced leverage over the gulf. So what now? Escalation to get out of this? That appears to be a live possibility. The president is now in ‘revenge mode,’ we’re told — which is, of course, an emotion, not a strategy.” (07/24/26)
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/revenge-mode-as-strategy-a54
- Afghan Lessons for American Democracy
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by James Bovard“After Al Qaeda terrorists used Afghanistan for training bases for the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan and quickly routed the Taliban government. President George W. Bush boasted that U.S. troops brought freedom and democracy to Afghanistan. But rather than democracy, the United States brought Hamid Karzai, an oil pipeline lobbyist who was expected to slavishly follow U.S. orders.” (07/24/26)
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/afghan-lessons-for-american-democracy/
- The MAGA “Anchor Baby” Myth Doesn’t Hold Water
Source: The UnPopulist
by Steve Chapman“Why birth tourism should bother the president and his supporters is a bit of a puzzle. Americans who oppose immigration often allege that foreigners who migrate here take jobs, drive up housing prices, sponge off taxpayer-provided benefits, congregate in clannish enclaves, and implant alien religions and customs. So you would think the critics would take a benign view of foreigners who come briefly and immediately leave, interacting with hardly anyone and paying their own way before vanishing like footprints on an ocean beach. The longstanding complaint is that this option allows their citizen children—’anchor babies,’ as they are misleadingly called—to sponsor parents for legal admission to the U.S. But kids can’t do that until they reach the age of 21, and after they do, the process of securing green cards can take a full decade.” (07/25/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-maga-anchor-baby-myth-doesnt
- The surveillance camera on your street corner: Lawful spying or constitutionally problematic?
Source: Fox News
by Kerri Kupec Urbahn“The cameras that scan your car on your commute to work have quietly become one of the most widespread surveillance tools in America. They record vehicle sightings, feed searchable databases and, when agencies choose to share data, can connect searches across jurisdictional lines. Recent courts have upheld the particular ALPR networks before them, but they have left open whether a denser, more revealing system could cross the constitutional line.” (07/24/26)
- Is Ayn Rand’s Philosophy Consistent with Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics?
Source: Freedom and Flourishing
by Dr. Edward W Younkins“The similarities between Rand and Aristotle are substantial. Both hold that ethics is grounded in a conception of human nature and that the good life consists in the fulfillment of that nature. For Aristotle, eudaimonia is the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue; for Rand, happiness is the state of consciousness that proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. Both identify reason as the distinctive human capacity and the foundation of virtue. For Aristotle, the rational part of the soul is what distinguishes humans from other animals; for Rand, ‘reason is man’s basic means of survival’. Both conceive of virtue as a kind of excellence in functioning—the excellent exercise of one’s human capacities. … Despite these deep affinities, important differences separate Rand from Aristotle.” (07/25/26)
https://www.freedomandflourishing.com/2026/07/is-ayn-rands-philosophy-consistent-with.html
- A Curious Hospital Argument
Source: Show-Me Institute
by Elias Tsapelas“Everyone agrees that health care costs too much. The disagreements start when we have to decide who should receive less money. That’s a big reason why warnings about Medicaid ‘cuts’ often receive so much attention. But the latest claims from Missouri hospitals about the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) cuts hurting rural hospitals deserve a closer look. At first glance, the concern seems straightforward. Since the government is the single largest purchaser of health care in the country, hospitals operating on thin margins could understandably struggle if they were paid less by Medicare or Medicaid. The first question, though, is what exactly is being cut. The OBBB does not reduce the payment rates hospitals receive for treating Medicare patients or Medicaid patients who remain eligible. Instead, it implements community engagement requirements for some able-bodied Medicaid enrollees beginning next year …” (07/24/26)
https://showmeinstitute.org/article/health-care/a-curious-hospital-argument/
- The Saudi Nuclear Deal Is a Typical Trump Fiasco
Source: The Nation
by Jeet Heer“The deal as initially described would allow Saudi Arabia to achieve its long-standing goal of having the US greenlight and assist in its civilian nuclear program without having to make any of the compromises that had previously prevented an agreement. … But within 24 hours, the landmark deal was already starting to unravel. The New York Times reported that the deal was ‘in doubt’ because Trump had ‘added a new condition to the sale of nuclear reactors to the kingdom, declaring that the entire arrangement now depends on the Saudi willingness to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.’ This was a typical Trump negotiating tactic: pulling the rug out from someone after proclaiming a done deal.” (07/24/26)
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/trump-saudi-nuclear-deal-analysis/
- Is training AI on copyrighted materials protected by the First Amendment?
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Tyler Tone“Much like the information gleaned from reverse engineering Sega’s copyrighted software, the patterns an AI model learns are not necessarily copyrighted works. Copyright protects an author’s particular expression, not the broader relationships among words, concepts, themes, or writing techniques that readers — or even AI models — may learn and deploy from it.” (07/24/26)
https://www.fire.org/news/training-ai-copyrighted-materials-protected-first-amendment
- Sorry, haters, Christopher Nolan’s Odysseus is no wimp — but a hero for our times
Source: New York Post
by Rich Lowry“Was Odysseus, the legendary Greek warrior, actually a wimp? The most trenchant criticisms of Christopher Nolan’s new blockbuster movie ‘The Odyssey’ involve how he portrays the hero of the tale. In the original, Odysseus is a clever, multifaceted hero who comes up with the idea for the Trojan horse and then, after the Greeks win the decade-long war with Troy, embarks on his arduous journey home to Ithaca and his waiting wife Penelope. Now, it’s true that Nolan modernizes Odysseus for a contemporary audience, but what was he supposed to do? If he’d given us the 100% Homeric Odysseus — abducting women, slaughtering unarmed people, sleeping around with nymphs, ordering the execution of housemaids — there’d be little chance that movie-goers would be interested in shelling out to see a 3-hour movie about his adventures and travails.” (07/24/26)
- Unattended Baggage, episode 349
Source: Unattended Baggage
“Lube up, because oil is going bye-bye.” (07/25/26)
https://unattendedbaggage.substack.com/p/episode-349-lube-up-because-oil-is
- Pink Flame of Liberty, 07/25/26
Source: Pink Flame of Liberty
“Let’s Examine JC Filings of Appeal of the Disaffiliation of the Libertarian Party of NH.” (07/25/26)
- Free Talk Live, 07/25/26
Source: Free Talk Live
“Dave Ridley calls about Venice.AI and open claw. Also, talks about the recent discovery of ‘j space’ :: Sarah in NM calls about Z-trip replacing yellow cab :: 1.15 trillion dollar ndaa merges U.S. and Israel militaries :: Activist opposed to ‘cop city’ development indicted for giving a duress code to CPB that wiped his phone :: Florida pastor sues openAI for bad medical advice :: Major data center complex in Virginia halted after public pushback :: David in NM calls in his usual disjointed style :: Hosts: Stu, Angelo, Riley O’Bill.” (07/25/26)